


Heartless

by JinxedForever



Series: Jinx's Overwatch One Shots [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attraction, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Boys In Love, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Dorks in Love, Dubious Science, Edgy Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Exes, Forbidden Love, Gore, Grim Reapers, Guilt, Head Injury, Healing, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Injury, Injury Recovery, Love, Love/Hate, M/M, Magic and Science, Major Character Injury, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Monster Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Opposites Attract, Overwatch - Freeform, Overwatch Recall, POV Alternating, POV Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, POV Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Past Relationship(s), Post-Fall of Overwatch, Psychopaths In Love, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes Has Issues, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes Redemption, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes is a Softie, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes-centric, Reapers, Recovery, Sad, Sad Ending, Sad Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Secret Relationship, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Indulgent, Sort of? - Freeform, Talon Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Team Talon (Overwatch), True Love, Violence, Whump, no one dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:21:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21846598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinxedForever/pseuds/JinxedForever
Summary: Jack crumpled like his strings had been cut, the projectile fracturing and bursting into pieces, littering the old soldier’s temples and collecting along the top of his visor. Agony shattered through his head, leaving him so disoriented he could barely make out the scorching heat of his own blood trickling down his face. He realized, in his last fleeting moments of consciousness, that his skull had probably been split open and the wisps of black smoke curling at eye level along the ground beside him were the last things he would ever see.ORTwo old soldiers torn apart by war reunite in a moment of crisis.
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Series: Jinx's Overwatch One Shots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666648
Comments: 10
Kudos: 80





	Heartless

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!! This is my first time writing Reaper76 and I've been fussing with it for a while and I think it's as good as it's gonna get. I definitely play around with some non-canon concepts of Reaper's makeup, so you've been warned!! I hope you enjoy, thank you for reading!! Kudos and feedback in the comments section would be greatly appreciated!!

Jack noticed it a split second too late. The mass of condensed rock slipped past Reinhardt’s shield by a fraction of an inch and hurtled straight at Jack. One moment, he could make out the pores pock-marking the mass of debris, the haunting purple gravitational field filling the edges of his vision, and the next, it struck him, and his head snapped to the side with a bone-chilling crack. Jack crumpled like his strings had been cut, the projectile fracturing and bursting into pieces, littering the old soldier’s temples and collecting along the top of his visor. Agony shattered through his head, leaving him so disoriented he could barely make out the scorching heat of his own blood trickling down his face. He realized, in his last fleeting moments of consciousness, that his skull had probably been split open and the wisps of black smoke curling at eye level along the ground beside him were the last things he would ever see.

Reaper eyed Jack’s pitiful squad as they were ruthlessly driven away from the fallen soldier, despite the desperate cries for him, at the hands of the Talon forces swarming the area. Overwatch hadn’t sent enough agents, had underestimated the stock Talon had in the EMP bombs stashed in a warehouse nearby, and it would cost them one of their own. Now they were scattered, leaderless, and bloodied. Gabe refused to put names to the twisted, scared faces he could make out. They would retreat soon, with the right amount of pressure, and they would leave Jack spread eagle and bleeding out in the street, a wasted death in combat that wasn’t even all that noble.

Reaper’s discorporated form drifted towards the fallen man, flooding over his prone body and reassembling with his knees at Jack’s head, clawed talons deftly assessing the head wound bleeding heavily into the cobblestones. His skull had been cleaved open from his eyebrow up into his hairline, and through all the blood, Gabe was almost sure he could see shifting brain matter. The one shot he hadn’t dodged had been the one shot that would surely kill him, the damn fool. Gabe’s fingers dragged up from beneath Jack’s head, softly running over his throat and landing on his cheeks, cradling his face in the palms of his hands like he hadn’t in ages. Gabe pushed down the regurgitated thought of the sweet hum in Jack’s chest when Gabe used to scratch blunt nails along his scalp to calm him down on the days where the stress became too much.

A pang of remorse, of remembering what was long lost, pierced through Gabe, and he watched, terrified, as Jack’s eyes rolled listlessly and the battered soul Reaper could see undulating brightly in his chest began to flicker and dim. Fear, an emotion he hadn’t felt in a long time, not since he’d begun to rot from the inside out, surged within him, and he knew he couldn’t just sit on his haunches and let Jack die. Not yet. Not while he watched.

Jack’s cheeks were warm in his hands, the heat of another’s body so foreign it felt near-scorching, but the color in his skin was fading quickly. Gabe took the bone-white mask concealing his features and chucked it to the side, recoiling as the sun sizzled against his face. He closed his eyes, drawing his focus to the single taut, unused string in the plethora of abilities he harbored, gurgling as something inside of him shifted and ground against his ribcage. He folded himself over Jack and opened his mouth above the head wound, ice crystals forming along the walls of his throat and slicing at his tongue as a faint black mist poured from his lips onto Jack’s face.

Jack shuddered beneath him as he gulped in a greedy breath, blinking his eyes open despite the pain in his head demanding he do no such thing. He stared straight up at the roiling dark grey skin of the Reaper, ever-shifting, rotting and regenerating to patch up the holes that caved into his face, and jolted. He realized, with a jolt, he could feel his own skin moving, knitting itself together at an agonizingly-slow pace, and heard bone grinding against bone as his skull fused back together. He grunted shakily, sucking in another inhale, and stayed as still as he could, afraid of what the Reaper was doing to him. He wasn’t dead, at least not yet, so obviously Gabe still needed him alive for something. No- Reaper, not Gabe, Reaper.

Gabe eyed his handiwork with a wrinkle of his nose and a sharp grimace. He knew it wouldn’t be pretty, but seeing the grayed skin and the uneven scar his unholy healing factor left behind on Jack’s handsome face made his insides turn. He gingerly swiped away the blood over where the injury had been to make sure it had completely closed, careful to be gentle now that he knew Jack was awake. Couldn’t have him shouting and alerting the Talon agents around them of Reaper’s compassion for an enemy.

Jack hissed and shifted uncomfortably, blinking baby blue eyes hazed over with age and the overuse of cybernetics up at Gabe. Relief coursed through Gabe at the steely recognition surfacing in Jack’s features. He’d gotten to him before he’d gone brain dead. Good.

“Ga…be?” Jack rasped, his arms twitching at his sides uselessly. His brain hadn’t quite caught up with him yet, then.

Reaper scowled, quickly hiding his face in his hood and grappling for his mask. Disgust curled in his abdomen, the feeling increasing as he felt a portion of his jaw disintegrate and crumble away, only for his healing factor to rush to aid the broken area. He was a monster, nothing more, and he’d be damned if he let Jack know that Gabe still lingered within the Reaper, that he hadn’t stopped loving him and wouldn’t until the day he’d reaped his last soul.

He startled as a firm hand grasped the wrist searching for Gabe’s mask, and he stared down at Jack’s determined glare purely from the shock, not realizing he’d revealed his face until he saw his own mottled reflection in Jack’s visor. He cursed internally.

“Don’t,” Jack rasped, “don’t hide from me anymore, Gabe, please.”

Gabe grimaced, eyes darting to the side. “Don’t call me that,” he ground out.

“It’s your name,” Jack replied, stubborn as a bull even when newly resurrected.

“I am Reaper.”

Jack rolled his eyes and winced. A small smirk tugged at his tight lips. “You are and always have been a drama queen, Gabe. The only thing that’s changed is the increasingly edgy wardrobe.”

Gabe grimaced, staring back at his own blood-red eyes in the tinted visor covering Jack’s. “The only thing that’s changed?” He spat, anger surging through him in a rush. “Look at me.” He, in a fit of indignant rage, pulled the hood covering his head down, revealing more of his rotting skin to the sunlight. “And tell me that nothing’s changed.”

Jack sighed heavily, pressing a hand to his ribs as he grunted and pushed himself up to sit facing Gabe. He slowly removed his visor, revealing the deep scar tissue curving down his face, and met Gabe’s eyes. One of his hands came up, pressing over where Reaper’s heart should have been, a cavity now flooded with black sludge that just barely kept him moving.

“Despite our differences, our arguments, despite even the love that we shared and the acts you’ve committed as Reaper, I know you’re a decent man, and I know that parading as this undead being you’ve become must be slowly killing you,” Jack murmured, leaning forward so his freshly-healed forehead met Gabe’s. “If there wasn’t a small piece of Gabe left in there, you wouldn’t have just saved my life. You’ve always been a man of action, and not words.”

Gabe relented, leaning his weight into Jack’s space. “I am beyond redemption, Jack.”

Jack smiled softly, and a short chuckle escaped him as he drew back and met Gabe’s eyes again. “Trust me when I say that you’ll have solidarity back at base. The sheer number of times I’ve heard that same sentence repeated around me is frankly absurd. You’re not beyond redemption, Gabe.”

Gabe, on those endless nights where he couldn’t catch a wink of undisturbed sleep for the life of him, sometimes wished his tear ducts still worked, just so he could chase the release of sobbing himself dry. He knew how far gone he was, how far gone his body was, and that no matter how much Jack stubbornly clung to the fantasy they’d be reunited one day, it simply wasn’t in the cards. A nice fantasy, but nothing more than that. Jack seemed to have realized the thought Gabe had before Gabe had even fully had it, judging by how his expression dropped and a desperate glint appeared in his eyes.

“No, please, Gabe,” Jack whispered.

Jack’s hand went clean through Gabe’s chest as Reaper dissolved into a cloud of black mist and skittered away through the cracks in the cobblestones. He couldn’t block out the gut-wrenching sound of Jack sobbing wordlessly as he fled the worn soul of a soldier he’d never meant to love. If only he still had a heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! What did you think? Kudos and comments make my day, if you'd like to leave ones!!
> 
> I got inspired to do this while I was playing OW as Jack and got domed by a Sigma boulder to the head and heard the CRACK of it hitting him. Like, Jesus. So that was the inspiration for this. XD


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